The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [46]
Although Brusov did not reveal it to Rohde, this statement tallied almost exactly with what he had discovered in the Knights' Hall: chair springs and iron locks of German design (the Keyserlingk collection); bronze Russian door hinges and cornice pieces (the Amber Room). The fact that Brusov had also found iron strips of the kind the Germans used to strengthen wooden crates bolstered Rohde's story.
The Soviet team had run out of luck and time. Thankfully, it had not only discovered the depressing truth about the Amber Room but also recovered more than sixty crates of treasures. On the journey back to Moscow, Alexander Brusov prepared his report for SovNarKom.
When TASS called, Brusov must have thought everything was well. The state news agency could not possibly have known about his secret mission, unless SovNarKom had informed them of it. So Brusov gave an erudite interview about his discoveries in Konigsberg in the belief that this was what was expected. The Amber Room had been stolen by the Nazis and transferred to Konigsberg, where it had been put on display in the castle. It had been taken down and packed into crates shortly before the British bombing raids of 1944 that had levelled much of the city. Dr Alfred Rohde, the director of the Konigsberg Castle Museum, had confessed that these crates were in Konigsberg Castle until 5 April 194 5. An eyewitness had corroborated this story, telling how, the day before, Rohde received a severe reprimand from Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, for having failed to evacuate the Amber Room. Soviet troops smashed the fascist defences two days later, making it impossible for the boxes containing the Amber Room to be moved without being spotted. So they remained in the north wing of the castle and there, in the hours after the German surrender, between 9 and 11 April, they had been destroyed in a terrible fire that gutted the Knights' Hall.
Great discoveries had been made by Soviet investigators in Konigsberg, including thousands of Soviet treasures looted by the Nazis, but sadly Brusov had also discovered the hinges and mouldings from the Amber Room. No one knew who was responsible for its destruction. The Nazis, savage and barbaric, under siege? The victorious Red Army, which broke their will and fired the Knights' Hall? This was a war in which both sides had fought bestially, doggedly and unremittingly for a city that appeared as if it was at the heart of the Third Reich, the professor told the man from TASS.
Brusov's TASS interview, published on 13 July 1945, was picked up by the British Ministry of Economic Warfare's Broadcast Unit at Heddon House, who translated it on 27 July:
Confidential. Soviet scientists are carrying out excavations at Konigsberg Castle, in order to return the cultural treasures concealed there looted from USSR. In an interview with TASS, A. I. Brusov said that under rubble just over three feet deep they found an inventory of amber from Tsarskoye Selo... The amber panels themselves have not yet been discovered, although treasures from Kiev, Minsk and Kharkiv have been revealed .15
But the Allies would overhear nothing more on the subject. Soviet newspapers didn't follow it up. Tatyana Beliaeva made no public comments on her mission's finding. Within days Brusov had withdrawn into